Author C.M. Harris to appear at Chippewa Valley Community Center
Author C.M. Harris revisits her roots in the novel “The Children of Mother Glory,” which is set in the turn-of-the century Midwest. Like her heroine Glory Potter, she was raised in a rural church sect.
Unlike Harris, however, the fictional Potter remains in the religious community. Instead of serving her father’s ministry, as she is expected to do, Potter emerges as a dominant matriarchal figure who creates a new faith as well as an industry that supports her rural town.
But Potter finds herself increasingly torn between her religion and her desires, as she battles an irresistible attraction to another woman.
Potter is one of four characters whose lives intersect in the novel, described by amazon.com as a “powerful, beautifully crafted and inclusive novel” that “is a story of our times.”
Author Harris’ life went in a very different direction from her protagonist’s. After leaving home, she played guitar in rock bands, studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The Loft Literary Center of Minneapolis.
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“Men in Motion: the Art and Passion of the Male Dancer,” photographed by Francois Rousseau
Men of the dance
“Men in Motion” displays the lithe, muscled bodies of about 50 male dancers, demonstrating that they are as athletic as sports figures. There is not an ounce of body fat anywhere in this oversized volume, which includes 130 muted-color photographs of the dancers performing various movements.
Both ballet and modern dance require great control over the body. Dancers must stretch to assume and sustain difficult, often unnatural, positions. Their training doesn’t develop large muscles, but rather muscles that are instantly responsive to the dancer’s demands. A few of the photos, for example, show the pliancy of dancers’ feet, which have flexibility far beyond the normal range.
Perhaps half the men depicted in the book are nude, while most of the others wear dance belts. When the Dutch National Ballet toured several years ago with some nude dances, one critic remarked that they had not solved the “flop flop” problem. Dance belts do just that, while doing nothing to disguise the presence of genitals. Paradoxically, they seem to emphasize them.
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David Bowie of the “Diamond Dog” era and David Bowie, old enough for a “best of” collection.
Bowie biography chronicles changes
David Bowie knows what he’s singing about when he performs “Changes.” After making a big splash in the early 1970s as Ziggy Stardust, he went on to become the Thin White Duke, an artsy Berlin angst rocker, the “straight” Bowie of “Let’s Dance” and, more recently, the distinguished rock elder who goes to fashion events with his model wife Iman.
The career full of characters obscures the less fantastic, but very interesting, backstory of David Jones, a British teen in the 1960s who desperately wanted to make it big. He joins some R&B bands, dabbles in acting and mime, changes his last name to Bowie and records a painful-to-listen-to-now single titled “The Laughing Gnome” that seems to channel Alvin and the Chipmunks.
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Janis Ian’s autobiography — one for a long winter’s night.
Winter reading list
Were you able to give or receive the books that you wanted for the holidays?
Of course, that’s what gift receipts and gift cards are for.
Looking back on 2009, it would be safe to declare it the year of the memoir. Among the numerous memoirs published are a significant number of titles by LGBT writers or of LGBT interest.
The following is a list of books that will make the winter months more bearable:
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A hunk from “American Hunks”
Muscular read
“American Hunks” is an important contribution to the underdeveloped social history of the visual treatment of the well-built male body, as documented in drawings and photography since the middle of the 19th century.
It is a beautifully produced volume of 350 pages that includes about 450 photographs and drawings of wrestlers, “strongmen,” bodybuilders and other muscular men from 1860 to 1970 — more or less up to the very young Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Most of the photographs are in black and white but most of the drawings are in color.
The images come from a wide range of sources: mid-20th century physique magazines, photographs, pulp paperback book covers, movie stills, and commercial advertising. A quarter to a third of the photos are of nudes. Many physique photographers took both nude and non-nude photographs, limiting the circulation of the nudes to trusted clients.
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